This That & The Other Thing II

Station Status

January is a rather bleak month. Reality sets in and we have to head back to work, the weather tends to be colder, etc etc. Ham radio wise there is not much going on, or so it seems to me. Most contests are CW or RTTY and the one that I do want to go into this year falls on my birthday, so this means waiting almost a whole month before I can sink my teeth into a test. BTW I am not complaining about not being able to op during my birthday. I would much rather party than play radio that day but, I may get an hour or two in on the NAQP test before diving into things birthday wise.

One of the things I am planning on doing is upgrading the station.  This time around I am looking at replacing the tuner.  There are 3 tuners I am looking at.  All of them are MFJ's  The MFJ 929, 934 and 994B.  Each have unique features that I like, however it probably is going to come down to cost.

• The 929's key feature is the ease of operation plus the LCD display. It is also the least expensive of the three tuners. What I like about the tuner is the layout of the back. Simple and effective. It's the front runner of the three that I am interested in.  This tuner is commonly known as the Intellituner as it has the capability to store up to 1000 memories. 

• The 934 is a manual tuner but, here is the the cool part this tuner actually marrys the 931 with it. The 931 is an artificial ground that allows the operator to have a the ability to electrically create ground close to the radio even when the actual ground is far away. In my case 75 ft out in the back yard. There is also a 4:1 balun in the unit. This devise would replace the 931 that now sits atop my pow supply. The only drawback is the manual tuning. It is lower in price than the 929 but, still sits as the second option.

• The last in the 3 is the 993B the key selling point for me is the dual meter and the fact that the unit will take up to 600 watts of power, much more than I need but, still useful. It is the most expensive.

LDG was also in the running but, I prefer to have an actual cross meter or LCD display. The LDG tuners all use a bar graph system which is not what I would be interested in.

I have a very nice iambic paddle key sitting on the desk that is not hooked up. I will have to get that up and running. That of course requires a keyer for dot-dash recognition. I may also look at the idea of connecting the radio to the compute and running digital modes along with the CW. Another project for later down the road.

On the Air

For those not in the know I have a Twitter account. The idea is to communicate station activities, specifically related to DXing and contesting. For those who are not hams who want to follow me, welcome. Please note that I am not looking for some hot babe for a one night stand nor am I interested in the latest MLM scheme.

As I mentioned at the top January is a weak month for operations. Besides a small run in the NAQP the only other test I plan to work is the UBA contest on the 28th. This test is run out of Belgium and runs for 24 hours from 1300Z to 1300Z. I should be on the air for this contest. In February there are some big contests coming up and the NGH contest crew should be active in at least one. This I believe would be the ARRL DX Contest.

DXing on the bands this winter has been fun especially back in November. I worked a lot of stations on 10 meters. Including Kuwait, 9K2HN. I also worked one Japanese station and a whole bunch of Europe. Other bands have also been fun to work. The only bands I have not been active on are 80 and 30 meters. 80 is a tough band to tune and 30, well I need to set the key up for that band which requires a keyer, that is the plan for the summer as mentioned earlier.

Other Activities

The only other activities I have planned are related to public speaking.  I will be doing a talk at the MARC meeting this month.  It will be held the last Wednesday of this month.  The talk will be about contesting tools and how they affect ethics in the realm of radio sport.  Other than that no other activities other than operating in contests and DXing are planned.  Although in future there may be an opportunity to explore working from Zone 2 here in Quebec.  I'll get into that at a later date.

Until then I hope to meet you on the bands or here on the blog.  These days I am active on the weekends on the 12 or 17 meter band with a sprinkling of 15 and 20.  

73 Cliff VA2UTC.

Two Weekends Two Contests Two Calls

Back to back contesting, love it.  I had a lot of fun this month working two contests, two weekends and under two calls.

The first was the ARRL 10 Meter contest.  I ran as a Single Op Low Power Phone entrant and was aiming for 200 contacts.  That did not come to pass but, I was able to make a total of 155 contacts with 50 multipliers and a nice score, 15,500 points.  That is a record for the station.  The thrill of the contest for me was working Quebec at around 8 Sunday morning.  For those who are non hams working a local on 10 requires being very close to each other   I used to chat with a group of hams in Ontario on 10 nightly when i lived in Hamilton.  These stations were all running power and had good antennas and were relatively close.  This allowed for what is commonly known as ground wave contacts.  The band was just right to work VA2EM to get my QC multiplier.  A few minutes before or after and I might never have worked him as 10 began to lengthen out as the sun rose.

Generally speaking Europe was present on the band up to about 1700Z then the west coast kicked in.  Lots of Texas, Colorado and California along with a few other west coast states filled the frequencies after Europe faded into the noise.  I did hear one African station but, the pile up was to big to break and I had to let him get away, eh next year I will get him, I hope.

Next up RAC Winter, I made 20 contacts under my call then headed to VE2NGH's station.  George had done some work the night before giving the team a bit of a pad.  After the hey how are ya guys and a coffee with some chips George loaded the rig up on 15 and I began to run the station.  By the time I handed the mike over to Sheldon VA2SH I had brought the total QSOs up to 160 give or take.  Sheldon, Paul VE2OFH and George tried their hand at running a pile up and did a fantastic job.  Here is the cool part we worked DX of the back of the beam including a VK.

The NGH crew racked a total of 450 contacts and scored over 95K in points.  We also worked QC on 6 and 2M.  And, we got every province and territory.  Hey Geroge you can apply for that Worked All Provinces Award.  Besides the contesting the food ah that was great, pasta with meat sauce and apple pie for desert.  I don't think the other guys will mind my saying thanks George it's always a pleasure to op a contest with you.

Next month NAQP for me as VA2UTC rings in the new year and as for the NGH crew, we should be, barring any Murphy interventions, on the air during the ARRL International DX Contest.

73 to all and happy new year.

Cliff